Father, I have sinned.........

If you have watched enough movies, you are familiar with this opening.  "Forgive me Father for I have sinned, and its been ....too long....since my last confession"   It is a good way to start talking about the brokenness of your own life with someone who will help you bring that truth before God.  You and a priest, privately yet face to face.

Lutherans of the modern age have not generally participated in individual confession.  We are a Corporate Confession kind of denomination and many of us know one or two standard forms of confession by heart.

Most merciful Father, we confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.  We have sinned against you in thought, word and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone..............

Although our Lutheran confession covers all the necessary bases, it is broad and general, and you and I know we sin in the narrow and specific.  We are nasty to that person.  We avoided this person because of her skin color.  We don't like that someone because of their beliefs.  Not just anyone.  Some one.  With a name.  With feelings.  And we acted without love.

There are sometimes when I think we need to be a lot more specific about what we are doing out there in God's world.  I think we need to recognize the ways we have short changed God's gift of love and forgiveness.  I think we need to name it and claim it.  Once you have felt the weight of God's judgment, confession is the place where you and God begin to talk about what is going on.

Why?  because it prepares us to receive, once again, the amazing gift of forgiveness in the person of Jesus Christ, especially as present in Holy Communion.  It defines, once again, our relationship with God and our need for God's love in Jesus.  When we name it and claim it, we are only acknowledging to ourselves the truth that God already knows and it becomes the starting point for true healing and growth.

We enter a worship service dragging along all kinds of baggage.  We bring our wounded places, our burdens, our losses.  We also bring the truth of how we've fallen and failed and, no matter how hard we have tried, just didn't pull it off.  We drag it all in.  Then in confession we begin the process of re-aligning; we prepare ourselves to hear the Good News of God's love for us in Jesus.  We prepare to receive the gift of forgiveness.

But before the forgiveness, the confession.  I am the person who did this.  I am the kind of person who did that.  There is no hiding....not from ourselves, not from God.  Confession is the necessary link between the gift of judgment and the new life found in forgiveness.

Don't shortchange yourself.  Be real with yourself and with God.  Give the Holy Spirit one more chance to work in your life.  Confession is really and truly good for the soul.